Consejo Progreso Global

The Global Progress program, launched by the Center for American Progress and Fundación IDEAS in October 2008, is an initiative that works on strengthening relations between progressive politicians, thinkers, strategists, and policy-makers across the globe.
  
Global Progress was launched in Washington DC at an informal meeting of progressive leaders in October of 2008, organized in partnership with Policy Network. During this inaugural meeting advisors to the Obama campaign and future Presidential transition team met with senior advisors to the Prime Ministers and Presidents of the UK, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Norway, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia to discuss areas of potential cooperation between progressives after the election.

The objectives of this program are five-fold:

•  Identify and promote the central tenets of a new economic paradigm that engenders shared prosperity through job-creating growth, sustainable investment in the real economy and the resurgence of broad middle class across the developed and developing worlds alike;
• Analyze the comparative demographic and values trends facing progressive movements in North America, Europe, Australasia, Africa, the Americas and beyond and drawing general lessons for the progressive movement;
• Evaluate and promote best-practices in scaling-up renewable energy production and distribution, and facilitating the economic and cultural revolution necessary to shift to a low-carbon society;
• Combat the politics of fear and pessimism, and promoting a tolerant and inclusive society based on shared rights and responsibilities, equality of opportunity and respect for individual freedoms; and,
•  Nurture a new generation of progressive leaders from the worlds of politics, civil society, business and journalism, versed in the key global and domestic challenges progressives face and the latest innovations in communication and organizational technology.

 

2009:
 

• In the Spring of 2009, the Center for American Progress hosted a meeting for campaign advisors from progressive parties in Europe and the Obama campaign team. The strategists exchanged lessons on the most recent innovations in political communications and organizing. 
• In June of 2009, this meeting was followed by a high-level gathering of pollsters and demographers, inaugurating a comparative demographic survey in industrialized countries in Europe, North America and Australasia.
• In October of 2009, the Global Progress Conference was held in Madrid, Spain, under the patronage of Prime Minister Zapatero. The meeting brought together some 300 progressives from 30 countries on five continents with the objective of forging and advancing a common agenda for sustainable security, economic recovery and climate change policy.
   

2010:
 

• In 2010, Global Progress built on these successes with a series of public conferences and private meetings held in Washington DC, Berlin, and Madrid.
• In April, the Böll Foundation hosted a conference to focus on facilitating the transition to a “Low-Carbon Society”. Building on the Copenhagen Climate agenda set at the UN Summit in December 2009, the objective was to shift debate from setting international targets to delivering the “Smart Domestic Policies” and “Smart Technologies” necessary to meet them. The meeting brought together some 500 senior politicians, business leaders, financiers, scientists, entrepreneurs and civil society organizations from Europe, the USA and the emerging nations.
• In June, in Washington DC, with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation, we re-convened the meeting of strategists, pollsters and demography scholars to further develop the comparative research project by focusing on the mapping of political narratives and social values in Europe, North America and Australasia. The meeting launched a joint research project which produced a series of original papers analyzing contemporary demographic and value trends.
• In July, a meeting of senior leaders and academics from Europe and Africa – including the leaders of progressive parities in Spain, South Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia and Kenya- was convened in Madrid under the patronage of the Spanish Presidency of the European Union, to identify a common agenda and strategy for international cooperation ahead of the UN Millennium Summit in September.